Most important albums to me pt.1 of 10

My brother shared a cute Facebook thing were we are supposed to share our favorite 10 albums over 10 days. The idea is to just post the album covers and not really editorialize about them. Well, I take this stuff too seriously to let it go like that. Here are my 10 most important albums in no particular order, one day at a time.

First up is the album I played through all of my childhood.

I’m willing to bet I played Abbey Road more often than any other LP in my life. I don’t know how young I was when I started but I’ll say this, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer was the very first non-kids song I ever knew all the words to. My parents owned some interesting records by some interesting bands like CCR, The Association, Jefferson Airplane, Isaac Hayes, and other albums by the Beatles but Abbey Road was the one I came back to again and again, for decades.

Really though it was the first side that captivated me as a kid. I think that as a little kid I really liked the sing song tracks like Octopus’s Garden and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer but as I got older I appreciated the weirdness and heaviness of I Want You and Come Together. I absolutely adored the abrupt end of I Want You, it seemed so absurd to me.

For whatever reason I didn’t really appreciate the second side until my teenage years. Maybe because that’s when I started to play music loud. The entire medley and especially The End just sounds so much better loud.

Years later I learned that Abbey Road was essentially the death throes of the band and was essentially recorded without Paul and John working together. That broke my heart. Still, the album is a masterpiece by any measure and was the first album to pop into my head with this album challenge.